Athenaeum in Charlotte, NC Feb. 7th

On February 7th Athenaeum played a show in Charlotte, NC at Amos’ Southend. The shows at Amos’ are always fun, and over the years Charlotte has become a sort of second hometown for the band, especially since Ziggy’s in Winston Salem closed its doors. The set was a good mix of Athenaeum and Mike Garrigan tunes. We also performed different versions of the songs “Spotlight” and “Hourglass” which we rarely play. I had quite a few posters up around the club advertising the release of my new record which comes out this Friday, February 27th! I had hoped to play a couple of songs from “Walking On Broadway” but we didn’t get a chance to rehearse as Jeremy now lives in Florida. All in all it was a great show and we met many friendly folks after we played. The only thing we missed was having Kristen Honeycutt from 106.5 introduce us. Kristen has been there for almost all of the Athenaeum shows in recent memory, but her move to a different state prevented her from coming. We miss you Kristen! Thanks to everyone who came out and sang along. We’ll be back soon! Here are a few photos my wife Kellie took throughout the evening.

Happy band…

Happy crowd…

A view from the sound board …

Mike G. sounding beautiful…

The best bassist you’ve never seen in Bass Player Magazine… 

GI Drummer

Bye for now!

Mark

Basic tracking at The Fidelitorium

Greetings and welcome to my first blog! This is a shot of the control room at The Fidelitorium in Kernersville, NC. One of the guys from ntune.tv took this photo but I’m not sure who. Mitch Easter owns this studio and is a cool guy who looks a little like Gene Wilder but with cooler hair. In the photo here, Nic Brown is listening intently to one his drum performances. This was our second time recording at The Fidelitorium as Athenaeum had recorded a demo version of the song “Sweeter Love” under Mitch’s supervision back in 2000. I love the Fidelitorium and most people who record here rave about the sound and aesthetics. We spent two days tracking drums in late November of 2007. Nic, Snuzz, Mike Garrigan and I had a great time and would probably choose to live in the control room if given the chance. Nic is leaning against a Neve console which served as our liason between the real world and the world of computers. The drums were recorded to a 2″ 24 track analog recorder and later transfered into Pro Tools. We initially came in with seven songs but at the last minute I surprised everyone with “Baby I’m Your Man”, a new song I had written a few days before we were scheduled to start tracking. Nic pulled it off like a champ. No surprise there. Recording has changed quite a bit over the last ten years which I’ll talk further about in a blog post down the road. For now I’ll just say that digital technology plus a handful of generous and talented friends, enabled this record to happen. I plan on recapping my experience of the recording process for this project so check back from time to time if you’re interested. Thanks for reading my first blog! And by the way, that’s Morgan Kraft, assistant engineer at the computer monitor.

Local 506 with Longwave and Aminal

So here’s a photo of the band Longwave during their sound check at Local 506 in Chapel Hill, NC. Mike Garrigan and I played an acoustic set to open this show and were followed by the group Aminal. Longwave is a great band from New York. Their music sounds like a mixture of the bands Failure and The Flaming Lips, but with more of a British influence in the guitar sounds. Their new record “Secrets Are Sinister,” is really good and I’ve been listening to it quite a bit. They played a great set and also had a great light show, something you don’t see very often in smaller clubs. Former Athenaeum and Longwave drummer Nic Brown was in attendance, as well as Stephen Judge who used to manage Athenaeum. I guess it was a small reunion of sorts. The band Aminal was good and played an energetic set. I had not heard of them before last night. Mike and I played for about 45 minutes. Our set featured some of my new songs from “Walking On Broadway” as well as some Mike G classics like “October” and “Automatic”. I love the honest stripped-down approach of acoustic performances, but seeing bands with drums and loud guitars makes me salivate for my own guitar amp. I’m really feeling the itch to put together some full band shows when my record is finally released. Thanks to everyone who came out and listened. We had a great time! The next show I’ll be playing is an Athenaeum reunion date, February 7th at Amos’ Southend in Charlotte, NC. See you then.